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lpress writes "Google and MIT have both built open source MOOC platforms and offered innovative MOOCs. They have just announced the establishment of mooc.org, a non-profit organization that will provide a platform to develop, host, and research online courses. The devil is, no doubt, in the details, but this combination of MIT's educational expertise and reputation, Google's vast infrastructure, and the lofty goals of both organizations might turn out to be revolutionary."
From Google's research weblog: "Google and edX have a shared mission to broaden access to education, and by working together, we can advance towards our goals much faster. In addition, Google, with its breadth of applicable infrastructure and research capabilities, will continue to make contributions to the online education space, the findings of which will be shared directly to the online education community and the Open edX platform." Course Builder will continue to be maintained for the time being, but eventually Google will "provide an upgrade path to Open edX and MOOC.org from Course Builder."

More backdoors implied they already created backdoors in the first place. Currently there is no evidence they created any in the first place.

This is what we do know:

1. Google is required by law to hand over data when they get a request, such as through a NSL.2. Google said their process for handling this request is to FTP data over to the government. The government never gets direct access to any of their systems.3. Google publishes a transparency report on what government requests they receive.4. Google is fighting the US government on the NSL process and suing to make that more transparent.5. When Bush asked for all search data on all users, Google was the only search engine to refuse.6. Google went so far as to discuss creating off-shore datacenters to place user data outside the reach of the government.7. They're encrypting data sent from one Google data center to another to make sure the government can't attempt to intercept it in the middle. And they anonymize user data sooner.

This is the only company we've seen actively fight to protect your data from the government. So why are people creating fiction that Google is the one that is evil here, and not the US government?

Idiot. Oh, sorry, even the most stupid idiot already know that if NSA does not wanna any request to be published, Google MUST obey.
No, really, are you still playing AngryBirds? Please, start throwing yellow and red birds around and stop trying to look smart, because guess what, it does not work.
Oh, and one more fact for your little brain, look who ex-gov-nsa top manager is working for Google now.
I just wonder, whether i am the idiot, who tries to educate another idiot.....

Because they're the biggest player on the internet. They're the easiest target. And not to mention there's a fair amount of propoganda put out by the U.S. government itself against Google. It's an attack from all fronts, including the legal one (the streetview debacle). And I wonder how much of that was a government plant whose job was to give the government legal leverage against them. I mean, what idiot engineer would specifically hack the streetview cars to collect open wi-fi data?

I really doubt that the street-view thing was a government plant. I also, however, doubt that Google management planned it. In either case I'd need good evidence. (Not proof, which one can't expect to get in that kind of a situation, and I'll admit that even getting evidence about motivations, and who decided what, is quite iffy.)

In Google's case, the shareholders that get to decide how the company works aren't some mystical unknown investment company that controls the company from the shadows but the very two people that founded it.

Businesses love getting involved in education because you create a following. MS did in in the 90s and now Google is trying to put their name on education. Wether its a business decision or Google just being "PRO EDUCATION" is something only they know.

I didn't read the proposal in details but it sounds like they are trying to go head to head with Khan Academy.

To be fair both Sergey and Larry as well as also Bill Gates (who was still in charge of MS in the 90s) all have a genuine passion for education.

As geeks they share the perception that many other geeks do, that education is the cure to many of the world's ills such as discrimination, poverty, and overpopulation. They're not robots and like you and I they have political opinions and thoughts on the best solution to certain problems.

It's not surprising therefore that all of them would have such a focus on educ